Saturday, March 17, 2012

Ghent in a "primary paradise" and beyond

[***As with other posts, please click on photos to enlarge them:)!]

[The "url's" of various sources, which I hope you will look up, are unfortunately not "hyperlinked", however, so you would have to "bold and paste" them into an address bar as the main part of getting to them.]

My title here is qualified, even with "Ghent", since I'm not certain that all of my observations here will relate to the city per se. "Beyond" that, one or two observations stay within the "primary paradise" - my term of convenience for an area of perhaps just twenty blocks total, roughly running northwest from the landmarks often known as "The Three Towers", identified here, in an approximation of a view one is recommended to photograph in the tourist literature...

(from left to right - St. Nicholas's Church, the Belfort and St. Bavo's Cathedral, with, ironically, St. Nicholas's as the biggest visual presence here quite possibly being the least visited, and St. Bavo's as - I'll bet - the most visited of the trio here but the smallest part of this photo, taken from this point (or so) by MANY tourists, no discovery here!)

to the incredible row of medieval and early Renaissance guild houses on the Graslei....

to the darkly wonderful Gravensteen castle....

These may include the "top four" sites of Ghent (apologies to the beautiful St. Nicholas's if I am correct), just as a matter of widespread opinion, and within their immediate area and outside of it - including a slice of town I largely saw to the south - there is so much more that is positive, enchanting, concerning and/or disgusting, depending on one's viewpoint. For me it is mostly positive as of mid-March, 2012, I want to present its recent vitality - if only in still photos - and I hope that it continues to evolve in a stimulating way including a great deal of historic preservation.

The concern, at the same time, in my mind, is of being spoiled by success. That spoilation, broadly speaking, and from my incomplete view of the city, could grow because of huge popularity in the center, and then, in a largely 19th-century commercial area on Veldstraat and other main streets to the south, as well as an active student area, it could occur (more than it already has in terms of modernizations of first-floor space, etc.) because the crowded old streets clash with a more auto-oriented pattern, partly from witnessing the traffic pressure on main streets like Sint Jacobs-Nieuw just north of the very center of Ghent.

For someone like me, Ghent was a joyous discovery, and truly paradisical for most of my time there, but it has BEEN discovered to some notable if not huge extent, two examples being a no. 7 ranking on world tourism sites, and a National Geographic listing as the 3rd most "authentic" travel destination in the world. (endnote1 - please scroll down to near the end of this blog)

While a Ghent University student I met (if from the Limburg section of Belgium) said, paraphrasing here, that "we just find all of those 14th century buildings routine", it is obvious that at least a number of "Ghentenaars" know what they have, as in a window display at 5 Kapittelstraat (admittedly near the center of Ghent tourism, just a few hundred feet north of St. Bavo's), showing prominent local sites when I saw it at first....

but with one message of MAJOR pride and confidence, or at least a confident sense of humor, which you might have already noticed, to the upper right above, and can see pretty clearly here....

Further discovery could decrease Ghent being authentically a residential city in the center, for various income levels, and lead - unless this is already happening - to a "facadicization" (my term again), where, in not-so-far away Amsterdam (as I'll briefly write elsewhere), at least, clusters of neighboring facades are kept, but within them there have been, perhaps for some time now, gutted, functional spaces for large hotels. [On a few dozen Ghent blocks in March, there at least APPEARED to be little of that effect, while a homely and very central infill structure (with an arguably "artistic" fenestration, etc.) - for the Novotel Hotel - was one of a few sizeable "intrusions" as you might agree from this partial view....

looking southwest on Hoogpoort near Stadhuissteeg

and I write this knowing how elitist my critique may sound, especially without another unoriginal if necessary thought that you cannot expect every visitor to a popular city to pay hundreds a night for premier space in some extremely classy old building. [I too would have likely $$aved had I stayed in a suburban - or urban blackhole of aesthetics as opposed to my good luck of staying inexpensively in a hotel with "character" - a euphemism in part for a budget hotel with quirks of age, etc. - see this website for that place, the "Flandria-
Centrum", if interested....http://www.hotelflandria-gent.be/en/.]

Recently, at least, though, Ghent did not seem to be at an "Amsterdam" level of "spoilation by success", so to speak, small suggestions of that being that all of the extensive labels in the Belfort were still in Dutch and St. Bavo's exterior at times showed a sootiness (actually positive in a way as more "redolent" of age), partly seen here in a lower level on its north side....

looking south on Kapittelstraat to the north side of St. Bavo's

and a few cases of maintenance concerns inside, visible even in this blurred photo....

[While I could not see this painting's identification, it was in the Rector's Chapel or the Chapel of St. Sebastian, near the northeast side of the Cathedral, on March 13, 2012.]

where I think it is valuable to note this, but also the likely contextual factors that a place such as St. Bavo's is dripping, or burdened, with an immense amount of heritage to protect and still has an active worship space which may share the widespread European context of a deep decline in church attendance since at least the late 20th century.

It was great to see the Graslei, the Koornlei, the Korenmarkt (a square where guess what agricultural product was once sold!) and other places as magnets, especially for people (largely of the 18-35 segment!) at leisure as in this view on the afternoon of Thursday, March 15 from a rampart of the Gravensteen castle....

but a turn-off [if cleaned up by "Stad Gent" - the City of Ghent (government!), to be fair] to see somewhat trashed environments, and here again, a disclaimer for my CAMERA not having to worry about success spoilation, partly in the case of pictures at dusk or later....

looking south on the Graslei, with the back or east end of another massive Gothic church - St. Michael's, in the background

looking east to the Graslei from the Korenlei

I believe that parts of this "boardwalk" atmosphere may be slightly about living up to the "beereputation" (my term) of Belgium but are more so universal to youth entertainment, with at least a few of those young people taking breaks from a large campus and off-campus area perhaps just one to two miles south of the city center, much of that southern district fueled by the University of Ghent.

At the risk of reading into this too much of an issue I'll touch upon in another blog - the expansion and growth wishes of the University of Amsterdam (similar Dutch-speaking culture perhaps, different country!), I sensed in walks in that busy and gently rising campus area (there in the "LOW" countries, and seen generally here....)

from the Belfort viewing area looking south, with the central building being a 64-meter (too much of a feat to translate that right now:)!] modernist monument of 1936-42, the "Boektoren" (the Book Tower, currently, part of a Univ. of Ghent library), by Ghent architect Henry Van De Velde (1863-1957)

...that the University might be happy to expand, and perhaps to consolidate operations which are partly "downtown" on the "plateau" seen above, and that would be likely to threaten various landmarks or valuable 20th and pre-20th century blockscapes. In fairness to an institution which will be 200 years old in 2016, I do not know if this is true, but, on a walk "uphill" partly to the see the "Boektoren" (above), I noticed a small, deteriorated cluster of buildings on Sint Pieters Nieuw Straat, including another striking modernist facade where my limited language literacy (en "Nederlandse", or Dutch, with "Vlaamse" - Flemish - being very similar) - told me there was once a newspaper - the Dagblad Vooruit ("Daily Forward", in a Socialist sense apparently! - with thanks here to the possibly non-Socialist http://translate.google.com/). Unoriginally if often reliably, pardon me while I also google the newspaper name to see what comes up.... (endnote 2)

Continuing on the main street of "Sint Pieters Nieuw" on one evening, I continued to see some slightly dowdy structures, but this is often typical of low-rent student sections, and then the liveliness was heightened by a festival whose banner announced "Halfvastenfoor Gent 2012" ("Halfvasten" at least means "mid-Lent") seen partly against the contrast of a former Catholic church - Sint Pieters (makes sense!) - which now, from what I read, houses an art center....

Near the edge of this two- or three night festival, a strip of eating and drinking establishments began, partly with a type of seating I assume exists elsewhere, but it was my first time seeing it....

a comfortable inner tube and more, at a Pasta place (apologies for no exact name, but a line inside suggested it was not bad!) at Sint-Pieters Plein 42

Just beyond that was a stretch of at least four blocks on Overpoort Straat, where the overarching theme may be beer, and my overall contributions were largest in terms of culinary consumption, including an unusual wide-mouthed sandwich known as a "Groot Falafel Mix"....

at "Snack Deniz II", one of three Turkish-run (and owned, I believe) businesses which I patronized on Overpoort, including a quiet computer & low-cost internet place, where, as this blogblob grew on two nights, the hum of partying grew outside, including scenes like this, perhaps appropriately hazy....

looking south on Overpoort

ditto, a minute later, but thanks, people for letting the bus pass!

***************************************************

In closing, and with a drawn-out curtain drop here -- from the transportation terminus where that "#A6" above may have emanated, on the west side of Sint-Pieters Station....

to the newer trams of the city....

the old ones such as this vehicle, whose "destination" is hard to forget (endnote 3)....

and its busses, noted above...

its medieval "high-rises" and 20th-century mid-rises at a distance....

the city's port somewhat visible to the north.....

a portion of its east side (if claimed here largely by one famous landmark on the right)....

and its governmental nerve center....

the Renaissance era Stadhuis seen from the Belfort to its south

...to its restful places....

Bishop Pieter Damant, Bishop of the Diocese of Ghent from 1590-1609 (endnote 4), as depicted at his mausoleum in a chapel of St. Bavo's Cathedral

...including the quiet but culinarily exciting Patershol neighborhood (taking others' word for the restaurants' level; the few that i SAW looked great)....

looking southwest on Corduwanierstraat from Karmelietenstraat

looking southwest on Plotersgracht just west of Karmelietenstraat

...its contrasts seen and unseen, and only barely noticed I bet in my short time there, from a street where graffiti is allowed, and changed from time to time....

the north end of Werregarden from Hoogpoort

to the well-manicured space right next to it....

with a poem on a wall there in March whose presentation appeared to make it somber, but certainly not riotous like the Werregarden when I saw it (endnote 5)....

to the exciting and unphotographed "duo" seen one night, of a quiet 19th-century residential oval enjoyed by a young woman on a bench and at least two young men (perhaps of the "Universiteit Ghent") singing nearby, followed less than half a minute later - as I turned a corner - with the huge, tall, block-long (and deliberately overpowering?) "Leopoldscazerne" (Leopold's Barracks), which I have found out was a military installation built in the reign of King Leopold II, and thus easy to darkly analogize with the Gravensteen, because just as that medieval stronghold holds both beauty, fantasy and the memories of the torture which was one of the activities there, this mammoth is a joy today (and with a big chunk of it used as an arts complex) but is connected with perhaps the most infamous ruler in Belgian history - since King Leopold II presided over atrocities in the Belgian Congo during the 1890's - noting this as I fully realize that people who live in the glass houses of U.S. imperialism can't unabashedly throw stones at other nation's historic woes.[endnote 6]

[But back to the legacy of visual delight today, I hope you'll dip into endnote 7, including url's for pictures of the Leopoldscazerne which I highly recommend you click as this show-stopper calls to mind the 70's classic "she's built, she's stacked...."!!!)]

...and back as well to a busy Gent-St.Pieters station....

the image of Ghent's monuments which it presented at the time of its opening, as celebrated within the protractor-shaped image near the upper right of this photo....

[In an enlargement, landmark afficionados looking at the lower left part of the "protractor" picture may see the "Rabot", a late medieval fortification perhaps a mile northwest of the city center, and then, roughly near the upper left section of this history cornucopia, one can see the famous trio noted at the top of this blog of (left to right) - St. Bavo's, the Belfort and the St. Nicholas Kerk.]

....and its' ceiling's Thomas-the-Train like imagery....

this Ghent [with a nod to 20th-century American culture] - in the words of the famously flirtatious Flemish philanderer, flagrant flavenoid, flag-waving flan lover, flim-Vlaamse artist and flak-jacketed folksinger Woede Van de Guisrijk - was made for you and me!!

No, seriously, what an incredible place, with so much I did not see and so much that I hope it maintains as it continues a venerable but renewing life.

**********************************

Endnote 1 - The no. 7 ranking for Ghent is part of a list from the "Lonely Planet" travel company listing its "top 10 cities for 2011" and noting in part the "secret within a secret [that] Ghent
might just be the best European city you’ve never thought of visiting,
in a country that continues to be criminally overlooked." [http://www.lonelyplanet.com/belgium/flanders/ghent/travel-tips-and-articles/76165#ixzz1uKtone9V].

Ghent's no. 3 spot came in a 2008 survey in National Geographic Traveler ranking 109 sites around the world on their authenticity. [http://traveler.nationalgeographic.com/2008/11/nd08-historic-places-rated.pdf]

endnote 2 -Oops,
perhaps, fortunately and at least preliminarily - with all the sites in question being
almost entirely in Vlaamse (Flemish), Nederlandse/Dutch, take your pick -
but the attractive Deco "Dagblad Vooruit" building, "imaged" here on the
google gorilla:
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Dagblad%20Vooruit&psj=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1024&bih=629&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=2idpT8ClCuno0QHMptT9CA --

...MAY be in ok shape, partly with a reference to its being restored? - in 1990 while followed with one on its being sold (see *** below) but the two forlorn buildings immediately on its north side,
found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/16782093@N03/4818413387/, and
with a dusty (construction/demolition?) area next to the rightmost one
as I walked by them, looked like they might not have a long life
expectancy.

[Here,
additionally, is a good picture site for the "Dagblad
Vooruit:http://www.djibnet.com/photo/dagblad+vooruit/redactiegebouw-dagblad-vooruit-gent-142655422.html.]

endnote 3 - "Moscou", seen on the "headsign" for the tram noted at this point, is a southeastern Ghent neighborhood which received its name from nearby activities of Russian soldiers in 1814 and 1815. While their total length of time in present-day Ghent was small, one of their legacies came from the fierceness of their fighting against the French of those waning Napoleonic days, under their primary commander - an 80-year old "Colonel Bishalov" - whose local nickname "Peetje Kozak" (Cossack Granny) was used to scare Ghent-area children into obedience, even in the 20th century [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscou_%28Ghent%29.]

It appears that a bigger reknown has come to this section from a 2008 romantic comedy (in part at least) set largely in the neighboring urban area of Ledeberg and titled either "Moscou, Belgium" or "Aanrijding in Moscou" (Collision in Moscou), which apparently won several film festival awards.[Sources: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPyI9QUJU40 (where you can see a few segments of the film)

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/film/moscow-belgium-aanrijding-moscou;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow,_Belgium;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscou_%28Ghent%29]

endnote 4 - from a listing in a site on "The Diocese of Gent Belgium" at http://www.gcatholic.com/dioceses/diocese/gent0.htm

endnote 5 - The translation which I have found through http://translate.google.com/, for the first four lines of the poem, reads, perhaps more awkwardly than intended....

endnote 6, May 5, 2012 - Over a few days, I have slowly been reading about what King Leopold II did in the Congo, for the first time in my life, and, with the emphasis that this first look at his actions is very small, it definitely seems that his dark stamp on that land was very big, much of that through seizing possession of it and terrorizing and killing Congolese peoples to gain vast profits from the region's rubber resources.

My four "resources" included one with a quotation that to me, implies the ethical challenge of many monuments, in the US and elsewhere, built on the backs of others: "The proceeds of Leopold's looting funded many of the grandiose monuments
that grace Belgium today: the Royal Palace at Laeken, Brussels'
Cinquantanaire arch, Ostend's seaside arcade and golf course were all
paid for with Congolese blood and sweat." [“Belgium confronts its heart of darkness” in The Independent (England), February 23, 2005, at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/belgium-confronts-its-heart-of-darkness-484374.html]

My view, if not gained from deep study, is in large part to celebrate such beauty but know and remember what is behind it.

Sometimes though, it is time to move parts of history, with an example being the relocation of a statue of King Leopold to a less prominent section of the Brussels-area museum noted in the Feb. 2005 article above as it hosted a hard look at his rule over the Congo.

At other times, I feel that parts of history should be eliminated while keeping their primary sources. Perhaps 3-4 years ago, I was comfortable with South Carolina and Georgia removing the Confederate "stars and bars" from their flags (not honestly knowing now what the status of that controversy is) but I was not in favor of eliminating or destroying monuments such as those to Confederate soldiers, if at the same time I would be glad to see large plaques by their sides which explain them within a changed moral compass.

My other three sources concerning "Leopold" were the articles...

-- "Belgian Congo" included in the website of Yale University's Genocide Studies Program (http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/belgian_congo/index.html);

--"King Léopold II" (http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/leopold.html) ["moreorless..." is a site more fully headed as dealing with "heroes & killers of the 20th century" and written by an Australian, Bruce Harris, who appears to be a dedicated non-historian in offering his assessments of saintly and sinning 20th-century leaders - drawing that view from his own introduction to the site at http://www.moreorless.au.com/about.html.]

endnote 7 - Before I happily run wild in this note...you gotta see the Leopoldscazerne if you value landmarks, at least in "google images", so I'll hold this spot in a bet that I can easily call up some pictures of this Belgian big-boy tomorrow....

A few days later inside my lesser fort (on April 19) - The site below shows a view utilized for a postcard in 1939, quite likely showing the north side of the Leopoldcazerne which was my first introduction to it: http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&noj=1&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=I1UDKFyy3oujRM:&imgrefurl=http://www.delcampe.net/page/item/id,63907628,var,leopold-kazerne-2de-linie-regiment-buitenzicht-der-kazerne-zie-foto-details,language,f.html&docid=IMkzkLWwqQAO6M&itg=1&imgurl=http://images-00.delcampe-static.net/img_large/auction/000/063/907/628_001.jpg&w=1020&h=780&ei=xdSQT_ruBOLf6QHG7fyFBA&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=776&sig=107503107462696977728&page=1&tbnh=128&tbnw=157&start=0&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:11,s:0,i:94&tx=82&ty=64&biw=1016&bih=621,

AND while I always take wikipedia with a grain of salt, and the auto-translation here has some grammatical mistakes, its history seems likely to be good and recent (with a revision date of April 3, 2011), ends with the sense of the block-long complex coming to have both an artistic and military use (at least as of a year ago) and has two photos, at http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&u=http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopoldskazerne&ei=YdaQT4ynIKSN6QHYhci1BA&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dleopold%2527s%2Bkazerne%2B-%2BWikipedia%26hl%3Den%26noj%3D1%26prmd%3Dimvns

If you'd like to actually see the sites in question, my walk in this immediate area started perhaps two miles south of Ghent's center on the gently upward "Laurent Delvaux" street [on the east side of the wide intersection of Charles deKerchovelaan and Kortrijksesteenweg], bringing me to the oval, which was labeled as "Prudens Van Duyse Plein," and identifying the oval's namesake as a "[l]letterkundige - archivaris, 1804-1859" [sounds like an interesting - and short-lived - history-lover but a look-up should be coming! -- see the end of this note:) as of May 7!]; from the oval, I turned south onto Eekhout, where I was visually "hit" by the Leopoldscazerne and shortly thereafter, perhaps inspired partly by an adjacent street named after maybe the greatest Belgian architect ever - Victor Horta - a master of the "Art Nouveau" style - I thought that if this military mammoth was no longer wholly used for its original purpose (or what I thought was its first reason!), housing would be nice, and then near another corner of it, I saw that artists had officially moved in to at least a part of this grand domain.

For fellow map-lovers, one site to see is headed "Leopold Kazerne" and is within a list of tourist attractions at http://www.seeker.info/be/en/detail/Gent/poi-7e05f2c81493c08fad91a6a3a35308da--leopold-kazerne.

May 7 - Prudens Van Duyse turns out to have been a major Flemish writer and, more interestingly from an urban history perspective, was the archivist of Ghent for much of the last 21 years of his life. [Several internet sources here include a biography of him in a site on Ghent's literary culture at http://www.literair.gent.be/html/lexicondetail.asp?ID=5&AID=569 and a picture of Van Duyse within another biographical site at http://schrijversgewijs.be/schrijvers/van-duyse-prudens/ where it's noted that in 1890 the City of Ghent named (the oval above, very likely!) "Prudens Van Duyse Plein [Square]."